Although clearly Canibus is undoubtedly one of the best freestyling lyricists of his generation, he's still to find the right production team to match his vocabulary.

Diasporic dancehall reggae, spruced up and polished around the edges, but essentially retaining the artist's signature style.

This is a crisp, focused wobble through a primarily 'Philophobia'-derived set with drummer Dave Gow and bassist Gary Miller adding crucial propulsive qualities.

A 60-minute torrent of positivity, an open-ended love letter to his wife -

This is a left-field masterpiece and Brown's best work for a decade.

In a world where a cheap squirt of brass is enough to equal "a new direction", the Super Furries' free-range ideas-farming is a vital antidote to the preservative-pumped junk that curdles music's bloodflow.

Massive in pretension, slightly too long and gothic, but when all the pieces fit, you can't deny its unstoppable power.

Her choice of collaborators is piss-poor, and as every vocal snarl and heartfelt croon is wilfully blanded-out by the musos and their sterile embellishments, we might as well be listening to The Corrs.

Their most well-rounded effort yet.

Thankfully, this is more absurd than mawkish, made even better by the fact that Tahiti 80 are French people singing in English, and therefore do not always make sense.

These ten tracks come with such an earnest passion for the timeless pop form that any snobbery is punctured with an arrow drawn straight from Cupid's quiver.

Despite the fluid interplay of the four MCs and J5's evolving musicality, 'Quality Control' lacks the singalong pop immediacy of 'Jurassic 5'.... Quality then. But it's not the old-skool classic we'd hoped for.

It'll sit nicely at the ultra-sad end of the CD rack, but if you have to listen to it more than twice a year, you should definitely drink less, get out more and consider relationship counselling.

It's as though all the contrariness of Blonde Redhead's angular past has dissolved into a fascination with pop ('This Is Not'), '60s soundtracks ('Melody Of Certain Three') and naked piano ballads ('For The Damaged', featuring one of The Black Heart Procession on the ivories) without sacrificing any of the heart-stopping dynamics or confessional psychodramas.

Ultimately, despite all its self-defeating limitations and annoying, fey affectations, this remains a superb record.

Ultimately, 'Killing Puritans' is well-crafted and commendably diverse, but somewhat joyless and cold. It aspires to social significance without having much serious to say, just as its creator casts himself as a taboo-trashing auteur rather than accept his true status as a skilled artisan in the commercial dance field.

As essays from high-flying, high, high school dropouts go, however, 'The History Of Rock' isn't bad, if a little low on inspiration.

As ever, the detail is dazzling: snippets of woozy orchestral dinner-jazz, wibbly-wobbly pastiches of children's TV themes... But in the fabric of the music itself, Mike and Rich seem to be running out of steam.

Musically this is the sound of middle America at its most ugly and nauseating...

Gruelling assault course of lyrical genius that pours itself into the 18 tracks on this album-

This is a surprisingly decent album, as good as anything they've ever made.

ESG remain a no-wave New York group unlike any other.

It eases up on the rigorous deconstructivist tendencies that have so permeated the last two 'Lab records, taking a cue instead from the carefree effervescence typical of recent live encounters.

A seething, furious album; a declamatory statement against cynicism and passivity and the simple injustices of everyday life.

While it captures the contrary, questing essence of Sonic Youth surer than any SY release since 'Washing Machine', it also never betrays the sluggish, arrogant lack of self-editing that made '98's 'A Thousand Leaves' so bilious and unlovable, and the band's self-released 'SYR' EPs so hit and miss.

Like it or not, the songs penned for Britney by Swedish producer Max Martin, the man behind the even more successful Backstreet Boys, get into your brain like ketamine.

But damn those cruel hormones - Hanson's collective balls have MmmDropped, and the giddy rush of adolescence seeks to mutate Mercury's finest investment into a trio of crack-voiced hulks.